‘How will he see me now, do you think?’ She slowly raised heavy arms. ‘Not the woman he married, to be sure. The thing is, and I see it well in your eyes, you look upon all of this and imagine it soft as pillows. What you’ve yet to experience, lover, is the weight of it. Too solid to be a pillow, I assure you.’ She then reached out as if to accept his hand. ‘Come, let me show you.’

‘Toras—’

‘Ah! Is this the truth of it then? You imagine disgust in my husband’s face, and it twists you away from desire. Even the kiss of temptation proves suddenly sour. And what of wickedness? Did we not both delight in that? No longer, I see. Now you would stand before me, an officer with a duty to decorum, shouting your propriety with every crisp salute.’ Her hand beckoned him again. ‘Come along, lover, let’s dispel your fantasies and then we’ll be done with it, and you can beg again for my return to the Legion. Do this, Galar Baras, and I will reconsider my future.’

She was sober, or at least as sober as he might ever expect her to be. Grief, he supposed, had muted her habit of grand gestures. Or perhaps it was simply that there was more of her, the weight adding sloth to her practised indolence.

None of this should have attracted him. None of this should have awakened his hunger for her.

Seeing something in his gaze, or hearing the change in his breathing, Toras Redone smiled slyly. ‘At last, lover. Come to me. It is dissolution you long to caress. Others might deem that, well, sordid, but you and I, we understand each other.’

He stepped forward, and then his hands were upon her cool skin. ‘Toras,’ he said, ‘I came here to speak to you of Lord Henarald.’

‘Cast him from your mind, Galar. He’s found his own dissolution.’ She brushed her lips against his, pressing more of her body against him. ‘If he hasn’t already, he will talk to you about smoke, and things left to waste.’

‘Yes.’

‘Him and us, Galar, we but worship different aspects of the same grisly god. The end of things will lure us, until in our lust we make an end of our world. It’s nothing but variations in scale. This… dissolution.’

He wanted to pull away from her. Instead, he drew her tighter into his arms.

She laughed. ‘Oh, Galar, how I’ve missed you.’

She had ever been, he reminded himself, good with lies. That all that she had said before her last statement had been true, he did not doubt. But Toras Redone’s world was a private one, with room only for herself. She would take visitors, provided they understood well enough to expect only what she offered.